LeBron Rests and so do the Cavaliers: Cavs vs Heat Behind the Box Score

Cleveland Cavaliers (13-7) 84
Miami Heat (12-6) 99
[Box Score]

To begin with, I feel like I need to pull the curtain back a bit on how Behind the Box Score works at WFNY. At the start of every week Will Gibson, Kyle Welch, and I have a discussion in which we look at the Cavaliers’ schedule and then cross reference our own schedules and we try to find who can cover which game. Last week, over Thanksgiving, I was unable to cover any games so I wanted to cover a game this week. As it turned out, the only available game that I could cover was Saturday.

Turns out claiming this game was the worst thing I could have done. At the time, I looked at my schedule, I had no Saturday plans, so why not? Somehow I forgot that Saturday was going to be a day full of college football. I also didn’t realize that LeBron James would sit out this game. And that the Cavaliers would basically decide to thus more or less take the night off.

In the end, I really regret that this turned out to be the game I had to cover because there were plenty of things I would have preferred to occupy my time with on this Saturday evening than sitting through this game. Of course, to be fair, it wouldn’t have mattered which game I covered this week, it would have been a loss. So yeah, things are not going great right now for the Wine and Gold.

I can make excuses if that’s the kind of thing that makes you feel better. LeBron James didn’t play, Kyrie Irving is still out, this was the second night of a back to back on the road, the Cavaliers flight didn’t get in to Miami until very early this morning, Kevin Love’s hair is clearly starting to weigh him down, the waning crescent moon tonight was affecting the tides on South Beach. The hard truth is, though, that the Cavaliers, even without LeBron and Kyrie, are not 20-30 points worse than the Miami Heat. Even with all of the excuses built in, you would expect the Cavaliers to put forward a better effort than what we witnessed Saturday night in Miami.

So now the Cavaliers have lost three games in a row and are looking extraordinarily pedestrian. The defense is giving up way too many easy baskets and the offense is inconsistent at best. When you combine that with the lack of urgency or sense of pride that is typically expected of a team in Cleveland’s situation and it’s a recipe for what we’re seeing.

Miami definitely looked like the hungrier team in this one. They closed out on the Cavaliers shooters on the perimeter, unafraid of the Cavs’ backcourt’s ability to penetrate. And in a game in which you’d like to see Kevin Love step up and take over, he instead seemed to shrink into the game, never making his presence felt. It was just an all around frustrating and disappointing night for everyone.

On to the numbers….

• 5 – Where else to start but with Kevin Love? Is it possible that Kevin Love is hurt? Ok, ok, lets not overreact to one game. But man, in the last three games, Love has really looked uncomfortable. For most of the season Love has played great. He looked like he was really coming into his own. But then these last three games something has felt different. Kevin has missed all of his three point attempts over that span and Saturday in Miami he put up five points on just 2 of 11 shooting including 0 for 4 from three point range. More than just the numbers, though, Love simply looked disengaged. He wasn’t demanding the ball, he wasn’t putting the team on his back, he wasn’t stepping up in LeBron’s absence. It’s not like Love doesn’t know how to carry a team. I’m just starting to wonder if this is just a bad stretch of games or if something else is off with Love.

• 65.7% – In the first half the Miami Heat shot 65.7% from the field. It wasn’t just a team being hot. This wasn’t a “Well, you gotta just tip your hat to them” type of game. This was the Heat being aggressive and attacking the Cavaliers’ interior defense and making the proper reads and plays out of that attack to give themselves really easy shots. I’m not one who strictly believes that you have to have rim protection to be a good interior defensive team. I think communication and awareness can overcome a lack of rim protection. But for the Cavaliers, I didn’t see much communication happening. Instead, I mostly saw guys standing around and help being late or not coming at all. The Cavs just made life way too easy for Miami.

• 16 – Richard Jefferson was tasked with replacing LeBron James in the lineup and RJ did the best he could. One of the few bright spots for the Cavaliers in this game, I felt RJ really played a solid game, scoring 16 points to lead the Cavaliers. It wasn’t flashy and it wasn’t a LeBron-esque game, of course, but on a night when it seemed like the whole team was off their “A” game, Jefferson was at least active and made a coupe plays to try to spark the offense. It just wasn’t enough.

• 19 – Tyler Johnson and Dwyane Wade each scored 19 points to lead all scorers. Johnson, an undrafted player out of Fresno State was compared to Matthew Dellavedova by Cavaliers’ play by play announcer Fred McLeod. In some ways that is true. They are both undrafted PGs who have found a role on a very good team in the NBA. Johnson has put together some really nice games this season, but this one was arguably his best game of the season. He was disruptive on defense out on the perimeter and he seemed to hit a big shot whenever the Heat needed one to make sure they kept momentum.

It’s never fun when your team finds themselves on a losing streak. Clearly the Cavaliers have some things to work on right now. But to use an already overused cliché, the NBA season is not a sprint, but a marathon, and by the end of the season, we probably won’t even remember this week. I sure hope not, anyway.